The A406 North Circular Road
(these pictures taken travelling between Edmonton and Ealing)
Many were taken on a depressingly rainy 7 July 2005 just after news of the London Bombings had broken.
This was a very long walk.....
The A406 or the North Circular Road is a trunk-road linking west and east London going via North London.
Three schemes to widen parts of the North Circular are awaiting a decision by the Mayor.
This reconstruction would involve the loss of 312 properties, including 250 homes. Eleven hundred homes would
suffer increased noise. Six hundred mature trees would be felled. Upgrading the North Circular may attract orbital
traffic from the M25 and result in the decline of local shopping centres including Wood Green as shoppers travel
further to Brent Cross shopping centre at the junction of the North Circular and the M1. Stretches of the A406 are
already the second, third, 11th and 31st most polluted roads in Britain, and there are fears that widening the North
Circular would attract more traffic and make pollution worse.
Condemning the widening scheme, a Green Party member in the London Assembly said, “Widening this road will
not end congestion, nor rat running. It is like digging for dry ground in a water logged ditch. Adding extra lanes will
just add extra traffic."
The decades of uncertainty have given the homes and businesses on either side of the road a forlorn air. Transport for
London own these buildings and are buying up houses as residents decide to move out.
Many homes have been left to vandals, others boarded up to escape the attentions of the arsonists and squatters.
squatters rights posted on a front door
The inside of one of the houses
The North Circular endures a thundering stream of HGVs, white vans and company cars.
Even the local estate agent is derelict!
From New Southgate/Arnos Grove area there is a lack of dereliction until these houses near Brent Cross:
including a house with no roof at all!
and finally Ealing:
